OK, if your character is making a 911 call, then yes, show the network logo on the phone:

However, if your character is arming an explosive device via his cell phone, then no, do not show any branding:

Lastly, if a mobile phone is being used to detonate explosives, take the whole faceplate off just to be sure we don’t imply that mobile phones can do anything bad:

(Why oh why can’t I just enjoy some television like normal people do?)

A quick review of mobile data plans prompted by a newspaper ad I caught this morning:

Rogers is offering $7/month unlimited mobile internet access, provided you’re not using a PDA, PC card, or tethering your device to your computer.  (I think I pay $7/month for 3 megs of data right now, but with no restrictions that I’m aware of.)

Bell is also offering $7/month unlimited mobile internet access under the same provisions as Rogers.

Telus seems to be in its own space, with unlimited email, instant messaging, and internet access for $30/month, but if you’re on a BlackBerry or other device, the internet part goes away and is replaced by $8/meg access.  Still, the unlimited email part would be great if you’re Richard Stallman.

I think Bell pioneered this pricing strategy back in November, and it’s a good one: the BlackBerry is, I’m guessing, the primary revenue stream for data services, but these devices and plans are largely driven at the corporate level, and as such can be expensed, which makes for a different value proposition than using data for personal use.  The two tier strategy gives some access to the network without cannibalizing BlackBerry revenues.

As I mentioned the other day, Bell once suggested that I didn’t really need that much data because I wasn’t already using data at their current price points.  With that in mind, I’m wondering if it’s worth switching away from my E61 to something without a keyboard (but with HSPDA) and making a point of using the web on my phone every day, if only to prove demand (especially demand for sites other than Facebook.)  It’s not like the iPhone’s coming anytime soon (yes, I know I can get one, but I’m looking for something that fits into Rogers’ data plan scheme, and frankly, I don’t think it’s the data pricing that’s stopping the introduction), but I don’t know if I can bring myself to use a device without a full keyboard and wide display.

If the latest Mowser stats combined with AdMob’s metrics report [PDF] are any indication, when it comes to mobile internet usage, Canada’s in a dead heat with… Bangladesh.

The thing is, nobody who’s going to do anything about it really cares.  As long as politicians can read their email on their Blackberries, they’re “on the cutting edge” (and supporting a Canadian tech success story, double points!)  Rogers is running ads on TV promoting their Facebook integration, which captures the youth vote.

It’s really hard to sell the “what could be” scenario.  Last year I had an argument with a Bell rep (at a trade show; I wasn’t hassling in-store staff) and she tried to explain to me how I didn’t actually need more wireless data because I’m not using very much of it as it is.  (Yep, kind of like “I won’t give you a second network card for the lab until you use the first one.”)

Sadly, Canada’s not going to do anything exciting with mobile until another country has developed, marketed, and proven a need for the next killer app, and they’ll have too much of a lead for us to catch up.  We won’t even have the consolation prize of licensing the .ca version – Bangladesh will probably snap that up first.

Near the end of Cringely’s latest column, he briefly introduces the idea of the mobile phone replacing the Social Security number as an identifier.  To be precise, he said “supplementing,” not “replacing,” and it was as a financial identifier, but I’m thinking in broader terms than the problem that he’s talking about.  Plus, I don’t have an SSN, and in Canada you’re supposed to have some level of privacy around our equivalent, the Social Insurance Number.  In theory, anyway.

The thing of it is, and I don’t have the numbers, but I expect that we’ll see a point where more people will have mobile phones than credit cards (that could very well be already true on a global level).  Of course, people can and do also have more than one mobile phone, so it’s not a one to one relationship, but the potential still exists to take huge advantage of what’s becoming an ubiquitous inferface with built in processing power.

Think about it, why would we need smart cards when we can already exchange messages over Bluetooth?  I’ve been thinking about public key authorization/authentication schemes lately (though in a “wouldn’t it be cool if” fashion, not as in “I’m going to spend time implementing this”), and there’s no reason why a purchase couldn’t be authorized at point of sale through a key exchange on a mobile phone, including PIN entry if desired.

The best part?  It wouldn’t have to involve the wireless carriers at all – while direct billing to my cell phone bill would be cool, I have no faith in the carriers to actually pull this off at a level that would get adoption rates high enough.  This could hook into existing credit card/debit infrastructure.

Well, there is one reason why this wouldn’t work -most consumers can’t do basic things on their phones. A year ago I helped out at a trade show selling ringtones, and I’d walk people through the process, which, since the offering was off-deck, involved sending a premium SMS to get a WAP push.  Everybody who did it got their tone, but in each and every case, there was a different process to actually download and save the message – and this is even on different phones by the same manufacturer.

This is where I’m (mildly) interested in the Google Phone OS – I haven’t read the specs, but I could care less about the developer model – if they can standardize the interface even a little, it’s going to go a long way towards making even the possibility of mobile phone-based payment authentication happen.  No retail worker (or the lineup behind you) is going to want to spend time helping you figure out how your phone works.  In that sense, it’s a solution looking for a problem, and for this to work, it would have to be about as fast as a card swipe/PIN entry combined with a higher degree of security.

Is it worth the effort?  I think that adoption at the retail level can bring in enough interest to find fun new ways to use the technology -  single signon for websites (replacing RSA gadgets or via integration with OpenID, for example), gas pump payments (granted, not much different than retail, but no, no explosion risk, move along), and even the holy grail of person to person transactions (last seen in the precursor to PayPal).

Mostly though, I’m pissed off that we’ve been carrying computers in our pockets for years and until the iPhone came out (which is more potential than real new features at this point), all we’ve been using them for is to make phone calls and check email.